Betrayal Suits You Sweetly
by Genesis R
Summary: Ed was always looking for a way to help Al, and Winry was always waiting for him at the end of the road. Seasons passed and he didn't return. Didn't call, didn't write, didn't visit. She never realized how empty her life was until he went and tore a hole in it. Slight AU.


**A/N:** For lack of canon dates, in this story I made Ed's birthday some time in late winter (February). Trisha died in July, and Ed and Al left soon after burning their house on October 3. I arbitrarily assigned Winry's birthday as October 24th or so.

* * *

Betrayal Suits You Sweetly

 _by Genesis R_

Ed left three weeks before her twelfth birthday. Winry hadn't really expected him to stick around, but it would have been a nice gesture on his part. Even though — it wouldn't have been very _Ed_ -like. Trust him to take his little brother and go running off to join the military rather than stay for a little girl's birthday party. She understood, she really did. Al was his brother; Al far outweighed anything else in Ed's life. Still... she threw her brand-new wrench at the wall anyway.

Autumn turned into winter, and it became too cold for Winry to sit on the front steps and watch the road to the station. Four months was a little early to be expecting him back anyway; Ed would never admit defeat that easily. As long as it remained up to _him_ to admit defeat. If it was forced upon him, who knew if he would ever return?

All Winry really knew of war was through her parents, and all that she knew from _them_ was that people walked down that road to the train station and no one ever came walking back. Ed, though, he would come back.

One frosty morning, after the first and probably only snowfall Resembool would get that winter, Winry swept the small drifts off the front steps and stood there, looking at the horizon. If she closed her eyes, she could see a red-clad figure marching up the hill. Behind him was a suit of armor, or a younger boy with pale hair and green-gold eyes — her vision was hazy on that point. First and foremost, Ed would come up to her and grin like he used to, a smile she hadn't seen since before the automail. He'd make some quip about her shirking her chores, and she'd threaten him with a wrench, and then he'd be home and safe and she could breathe again.

A cold, wet nose nuzzled into her limp hand and she glanced down at Den with a sad smile.

"Looks like it won't be today, boy." She patted his head and swept one more time at the handful of drifting snowflakes collecting on the stone. "Maybe tomorrow."

* * *

The short days of winter fled by quickly enough. The new year came; January passed and February blew in with a rush of freezing sleet.

The upstairs shutters were banging in the wind when Winry stepped out onto the porch. The icy rain stung her face and ran down her cheeks like tears.

"You've got two minutes, Ed," she muttered through clenched teeth. One hand held her coat closed at her neck while the other tried to shield her eyes. The road was a mess of thick mud and puddles and she could only imagine the suction power it could exert. It would be hard on his automail port, a constant strain on his leg with every step. He'd be sore when he finally arrived at the door, and probably in a bad mood because of it, but right now Winry would even take his sharp tongue over the lonely silence inside.

"How long are you going to stand there with the door open, girl?"

Winry flinched at Pinako's tone, then retreated indoors with a sigh. How long _was_ she going to keep waiting for him? Wasn't it time to live her own life?

It was only the next week that she suddenly remembered that that had been Ed's thirteenth birthday.

* * *

With the better weather of spring came an influx of new clients, and she and Granny were kept busy. Busy, but not enough so that Winry failed to notice the lack of letters from Ed. She thought about sending _him_ one, giving him a piece of her mind, before realizing that she didn't even know how to address it. She supposed she could contact Colonel Mustang; he ought to have an idea of the boys' whereabouts. Every time she thought about it, though, her mind kept returning like a broken circuit to the question: how long are you going to wait for him?

Obviously if his life was too busy to care about her, then she could let her own life take precedence sometimes, too.

She wrote lots of letters, but never got around to sending any of them.

That summer, she made a conscious decision not to watch for him any more. That way, if one day he banged on the front door with that metal fist of his — well, then it would be a completely unforeseen joy. And if he didn't come, then at least she wouldn't have spent even more of her life staring down an empty road.

Upon Pinako's suggestion that she take a break from the exhausting work of automail crafting, Winry decided she was truly going to enjoy herself that summer. She played by the river with Den more than before, even going so far as to build him a lightweight-alloy leg so he could go swimming with her.

Later, when the fireflies came out, she and several other girls went camping on the forested slopes east of town. One of the girl's brothers had offered to come along, to carry firewood and protect them from wildlife, but Winry was the first to shoot that idea down. If Ed couldn't be there, then other boys shouldn't either. Although she never said that aloud, even to herself.

During the camping trip, the question of boyfriends inevitably came up. It seemed like all the girls had one, whether they were too shy to admit it or not.

One of them, Nellie, an old friend, finally turned to Winry and asked if she had any crushes.

With a shrug and a flip of her hair, the blonde mechanic denied all charges. "There just aren't that many boys around here, you know? None of my type, anyway."

"Oh." Another girl, Tyra, looked disappointed. "I'd kind of bet on that boy you had living with you for so long last year. With a fake arm _and_ leg, I figured he'd be exactly your type."

Something inside of Winry flared at the flippant mention of Ed's suffering, and the casual disregard of his name, but she bit her tongue. After months of denying that she cared, she couldn't allow herself to regress that far. Plus, admitting it in front of her friends would make it undeniable that she was letting her life slip away while waiting for a boy who probably never cared to begin with.

So she did the next-best thing. "You mean Ed Elric? He's more of a brother to me than anything."

"Besides, didn't he join the military?" They all shared knowing nods around the campfire. The Ishbal War hadn't been that long ago; most families in the region had lost a father or grandfather, uncle or older brother. 'Joining the military' was comparable to 'going to the grave', for the generation that had grown up on war stories.

Once again, Winry had to fight a clenching feeling in her gut, but the conversation soon turned to safer topics and she was laughing as heartily as the rest at the other girls' stories.

* * *

Later in the summer, on the anniversary of Trisha's death, Winry thought Ed would surely come back. He didn't; she was left gathering white roses on her own, and left holding a twilight vigil over the grave all alone. She'd hardly known the boys' mother any better than her own parents, gone when she was so young, but she stood there because she felt that _someone_ ought to do it.

When it got dark and the mosquitoes came out, she headed home and went straight to her room. This town was so full of death and departures and endings. No wonder Ed had left; maybe he had recognized the poisonous air. Maybe he was willing to write her off if she didn't get up the guts to follow him. Or maybe he was hoping that she would stay put, so he would always have a safe place to return to. Or maybe he just didn't care about anything.

The morbid thoughts dissipated by morning, but a bitter taste remained.

* * *

Winry had meant to save her first kiss for Ed. Good intentions never played out quite right, and it was the freckled redhead who lived above the bakery who claimed her first.

It was her birthday, her thirteenth birthday, and he had brought her a half-dozen frosted cupcakes. They shared the desserts under the trees by the river and there was chocolate on both their mouths. The redhead came closer and at first she didn't know what to think until suddenly she did, and then the rest of the world stopped. Nothing mattered except for the next ten seconds and the two inches that separated their lips.

Pinako scolded her afterward for the chocolate crumbs all down her shirt front, but even that didn't quash the grin that persisted for most of a week on Winry's face.

* * *

She'd never given much thought to the future. She'd lived in Resembool for all her young life; her parents had lived there; Granny _still_ lived there. So when Pinako mentioned moving away to find a more wealthy client-base, Winry's only expression was surprise.

"But why? The people here need us. They come to us because they can't afford a big-city mechanic." And if I leave, how will Ed find me? ...If he ever looks.

"I'll be expecting you to go to school at some point, Winry. And that will be big-city, and expensive. We'll need money from somewhere."

"I don't need to go to school." She frowned at the scattered pieces of Den's automail laid out on the table before her. How did that dog manage to lose two screws already?

"Yes, you do," Pinako answered sharply. "Without a degree, you can't be an officially practicing engineer. I'm expecting you to continue the business on your own, and without certification, you'll be stuck as an assistant all your life."

Winry's mind was half on the task at hand and half unwillingly on automail and Ed in general, and she unthinkingly said aloud, "He joined the military without a degree."

Pinako's voice went utterly cold. "His only justification was that it could help Al. You have no reason at all to sell yourself out like that."

 _I could do it to find Ed_ , she thought, but this time said nothing. Wasn't home more important now, anyway? The comfortable house, the river nearby, their familiar group of clients, the bakery redhead?

Winry wondered what Ed would say to all this. Did he regret joining the military and passing over an 'ordinary' life? Would he come down on her side or Granny's? Or he'd more likely create his own side, saying something like — She stopped when she realized she couldn't accurately remember his voice. She stared at the workbench until Den restlessly hobbled over to her and whined. Winry bent back to her work with a vengeance, but couldn't shake the sense of having lost something irreplaceable.

* * *

Winter blew in again, and this time Winry didn't linger on the front steps any longer than it took to knock off the wisps of accumulated snow and to make sure the steps weren't getting icy. Den was getting older and the cold was hard on his automail, so Winry spent the bleak months in front of the fire with him, either reading one of her parents' old medical texts, or simply sipping hot cocoa and staring into the flames.

When she burned pine wood, the fire licked up in orange-red tufts, with the hotter, bluer flames below, like the hair and eyes of the bakery boy. He visited her a lot that winter, but she never told him her conceit about the fire. Because every time she saw carrot-colored hair reflected in the fireplace, around the edges there was always bright gold that formed itself into eyes more scornful the longer she looked.

She didn't want to tease the bakery boy, but she couldn't help it. She liked him; he made her happy, but she knew that the first time she made a definite move in his direction, there would be a half-metal tread at the door and half-metal hands turning the knob, and Ed's eyes on her sitting too close to the redhead...

But he hadn't come back yet, so why would he do so now?

Why not now?

This time, there was no chocolate needed as an excuse.

* * *

Because really, how did she know that Ed's lips didn't taste just like... this?

* * *

She intentionally made a date with the redhead on Ed's birthday, as if daring the blond alchemist to show up. Ed would always take dares just to prove he could. If he did come home on that very day, she would be properly chastised by fate, but it would be _so worth it_ to see him again.

The thing was, she wasn't even entirely sure she _did_ want to see Ed again. The wish might just be old habit by now, ingrained from months of honestly wanting it, until now it was a familiar aching part of her. It was so hard to disentangle what she felt now from what she'd felt then...

In the end, it was irrelevant anyway. She had a fun time and the redhead walked her to her door, where he gave her a bouquet of winter crocuses.

"Violet, like your eyes," he said, and she smiled and was happy.

Blueprints for an updated arm and leg were swept aside as she searched for a vase for the flowers. Even when they withered a few days later, she tied them and hung them upside-down to dry from a corner of her workbench, so they would keep their color forever.

When Pinako asked about the crocuses, Winry had to fudge a bit and say she picked them herself — Granny would never approve of a thirteen-year-old having a boyfriend who gave flowers. Even if Ed had been the one to buy them for her, she doubted Granny would have approved. Ed was military now anyway, and the only good thing that ever came from the military was a steady stream of amputees... That was neither here nor there.

Winry enjoyed the slight scent of flowers around her bench, and made a mental note to do something nice for the redhead, in return.

* * *

Spring came full-force, and Winry decided that a year and a half was more than enough time wasted. Ed had clearly moved on; from now on, so would she.

She stopped checking the mail that came in on every train, and was instead content to let the stationmaster send a message-boy every blue moon when there was a letter for the Rockbells. She still tended Trisha's grave — out of respect for the woman, and because she couldn't bear to see it being the only one not cared for by anyone — but she stopped bringing flowers. She never went up to the ruins of the Elrics' house, not even when the dead tree was struck by lightning and all the other children scrambled around looking for bits of petrified wood among the ashes.

When summer came and Nellie invited her camping again, she happily agreed. This time the other girls downvoted having boys along, as they wanted the opportunity to tell more stories — and Winry was there with the best of them. Ed's name was never mentioned.

Autumn, and Winry apprenticed herself to the baker, ostensibly to become a better cook, as Pinako's food was either canned stew, or awful. Winry was put in charge of the fruit pies, which was perfectly fine with her. The apples needed to be peeled first, and she found that she worked faster and better when the redhead helped. The times he was busy elsewhere, she often found herself with the paring knife on her lap and a red apple in one hand, a golden-yellow one in the other. Most times, the yellow one would end up against the wall or out the door, and she would alternately laugh and cry before making the best-tasting apple pie out of only red apples.

Once the apples were peeled, after all, there was no way to know which had been red and which had not.

* * *

Winry's fourteenth birthday rolled around, and the bakery boy gave her a copper ring with a piece of glass cut like a diamond, which she wore nonstop until it turned her finger green. She didn't fault him for not affording something nicer, but she couldn't help but look at the metal bits she generated in the course of her daily work, and think how meaningful it might be to have a ring made out of something that her heart was already in. But that would require alchemy. Maybe some day she'd commission a professional alchemist to make jewelry out of spare automail parts, but for now, even the green tint on her finger was enough.

Enough _of_ what, or enough _for_ what, she couldn't say, but when just looking at it made her smile, she knew she was on the right path.

* * *

Autumn drifted into winter; winter melted into spring without event. The first week of April was rainy, more so than usual, and dull gray clouds stretched to every horizon. There were no trains that week due to washed-out tracks, delaying the expected shipment of parts from a manufacturer in Central.

Winry was waiting impatiently on the platform when the first train in ten days finally arrived. The weather had dried somewhat and now it was warm and humid, though still overcast. Cicadas hummed from the eaves in a throbbing racket.

Tugging at the sleeves of her shirt as they stuck to her, Winry reached for the gloves in the back pocket of her cargo pants as the train ground to a halt. Station workers swarmed around the cars, jostling her out of her line-of-sight of the cargo container that undoubtedly housed her much-needed parts.

She was trying to muscle her way back in when an unknown voice shrilly shouted her name. Pausing, she looked around. There was no one she knew whose voice she couldn't identify, unless — No, it couldn't be!

Her heart suddenly beating somewhere in the back of her mouth, she raised her gaze above the crowd's average height, hoping to spot a towering spiked helmet. Instead, the crowd parted to let through a man nearly as tall as Al's armor, bald, downcast, carrying a huge crate on one shoulder. Accompanying him was —

no!—

a black-haired man in military blues and a grim blond woman leading him along by a hand clamped around his wrist.

Colonel Mustang, Lieutenant Hawkeye.

"Winry?" came Al's voice again, high and metallic. She should have recognized him from the ringing echo after his words, but she'd never heard him sound so... young? Not since that night on the doorstep, at any rate.

"Al? Where —" It took her a moment to locate his voice emanating from the crate, along with a glimpse of blue-gray steel and brightly-burning eyes.

"Winry, I can't... I'm sorry —"

The colonel cleared his throat as the three uniformed officers stood abreast of her like a firing squad.

"Miss Rockbell." The words fell from his mouth, deadweight. He took a breath and hesitated.

Hawkeye took up the slack unwillingly, "Miss, we regret to tell you..." but even she faltered, long enough for Al's heartbroken words to slam into Winry.

"Brother's dead."

The world spun. The gray sky came careening up to meet the barren ground; the station buildings and train crashed together into a monster of boards and metal.

"Miss Rockbell, you have my deepest sympathies. Edward was such a fine young man —"

"I know this is a shock for you. I'm very sorry —"

"As his commanding officer, I will do anything I can —"

"Winry, Winry, what do I _do_ —"

Everywhere there was noise and motion and gold fleeting just past her fingertips, replaced with flowing, streaming red. Isn't this what she'd wanted, as the platform tilted under her and a crack opened, widened, and engulfed her, weren't red and gold equal and opposite? Exchange, right? She'd stopped caring, she'd told herself not to care, and look what came when she disobeyed herself.

An arm caught her around the waist and she wondered dimly when the bakery boy had gotten here, but it was only the colonel, his hands stained with invisible blood. Pinako would be so mad: she was talking to the military. Only she wasn't saying anything, her mouth felt more like it was screaming, until she couldn't breathe any more and the platform collapsed around her, and the arms holding her were iron-tight but not half-iron, and Ed, Edward, _her_ Ed...

was gone.

How — how was that even possible? She couldn't even find the tears that needed to be poured out for him. All there was was a numb sense of denial, that something was wrong and this couldn't possibly be happening. Ed was unbreakable, too young, brash, tough, arrogant, stubborn _Ed_ to die. But the unthinkably inevitable happened anyway, while she was too busy not caring.

He was gone, and she'd been laughing. How long? How long had she been unknowingly defiling his memory with her smiles and intentional forgetting?

She'd thought she'd hated him; she'd _wanted_ to hate him — no, not really, she'd never wanted that at all — because he was never there and she was selfish. But now that he was gone and no one would have or not have him, everything was terribly wrong. All the things she'd said and hadn't said, all the pain she'd put him through with his automail, all her sharp words and thrown wrenches — now she wished that she'd only treated him with kindness.

Guilt, regret, but mostly overarching pain. She felt like screaming, _the only reason I liked the redhead was because he was all there was in your absence. I never felt for him the way I felt for you. Please, just let me tell you that!_ But he would never come back and she could never say what she'd always denied wanting to say.

The pain brought clarity back to her mind and her surroundings snapped back into focus. Feeling as if there was some other force driving her body, Winry pushed off the colonel's supportive arms and staggered to her feet. The hum of the cicadas vibrated through her body in a steady beat, _run away, run away, run away._ Ignoring the shouts of Mustang and his followers, ignoring Al crying her name, she ran.

The station slipped by like a dream, quickly at times and then slow. She tripped on the stairs and went down, scraping both knees so they bled, but she only looked dumbly at the thick red trickling down her legs before she stood up again and kept going. Nothing hurt and everything hurt, and there was a knife in her chest that she couldn't breathe around.

If she could just get home, she could go to her room and deny this ever happened, or she could go to Granny and hope for some comfort or wisdom. It seemed like a safe haven, until she came running and tripping up the road, choking on the dust and her tears, and realized that Ed had been there. There were so many times when she would come home from some errand and he would be sitting on the steps, one-armed and one-legged, playing with Den, or sitting in his wheelchair in the grass, Al by his side, or even when she knew that he was inside the house somewhere, and she could pop her head in his door to make sure he was all right.

There was no way she could go back to that house now.

She stood there in the road, panting heavily, still unable to catch her breath, and finally the tears came in a solid stream. Ed was _always_ there, and when he wasn't physically present, she at least knew that he was alive somewhere in the world. Now that illusion was shattered. How many times had she lied to herself before, how many times had she dared Ed to come home, and he'd already been dead?

It was bad enough knowing he was gone — what twisted the knife was the horrible uncertainty of _how long_. Now all her memories of the past two and a half years, all her happy memories, were tainted with the color of Ed's blood. She couldn't face her house again, or Pinako, or Den. Ed had touched them all; she couldn't look at them without seeing him standing there as he used to. And even the times that he wasn't there, the memories he hadn't been a part of, he was still a part of. The redhead had only been chosen because of the lack of Ed. What she'd done and said were done with Ed always lingering somewhere in the back of her mind.

Winry didn't want to see the bakery boy again, doubted she could eat apple pie and keep it down. She never wanted to see Trisha's grave, or the Elrics' house, or the train station. But where was there to run? Resembool was nothing but a dead-end and a graveyard.

She could always flee to a big city, perhaps, but even Central now was washed in blood. The whole world was running red. Home wasn't safe, outside wasn't safe, life wasn't safe.

Where now?

What now?

Helpless in her own trap, there never was a choice of what to do or where to go. She was chained here like she always had been. Nothing really changed. She just had longer to wait before she could come home to him.

For who would she be, without waiting?

* * *

 **A/N:** My apologies to all you readers. Here, have a tissue.


End file.
